Volume 4, Chapter 118 – Gathering In

Inside the flying vessel, Li Sheng sat stiffly at the control array. When she heard Bai Xiang come in, she actually seemed a little afraid to look at her.

Before this, Li Sheng had in fact felt a degree of closeness toward Bai Xiang. That came from the fact that, before Bai Xiang had established her own Dao, she had studied Li Sheng’s swordsmanship. Even Bai Xiang’s later self-created *Sword of Empty Imagination* carried many traces of the sword manual Li Sheng had written.

Setting aside the fact that Li Sheng had partly done it to provoke Xiang Xian on purpose, she had always been proud of and gratified by this matter. She felt that, at the very least in swordsmanship, she had not lost to Xiang Xian. In fact, judged purely from the angle of swordsmanship, Bai Xiang could even be counted as one of her disciples.

But Monk Zhuye’s form of address, “Your Highness,” had completely scrambled her thoughts.

After hearing it, her mind had been racing the whole time. She had gone back over the Bai family history and genealogy in her memory before finally belatedly recalling that Bai Xiang had not been born into the Bai family, but adopted later.

So the issue lay with her birth mother’s side?

That bloodline?

Imperial kin of the court?

“Not so.”

Bai Xiang possessed a sensory technique and could sense Li Sheng’s unease. After sitting down, she said frankly, “I have no relation to the Yu Emperor Sacred Dynasty.”

Li Sheng visibly relaxed.

“But there is indeed a claim that my white hair and golden pupils come from another dynasty that existed before Yu, from that dynasty’s founder, Emperor Feng.”

That—

Li Sheng’s eyes widened.

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Was that not even more shocking than the first possibility?

At her cultivation level, she could hardly be said to have never been curious about the preceding dynasty. It was just that Great Yu had always tightly controlled information on that period. Even as one of the Dao Lords of the Nine Prefectures, Li Sheng had never heard Emperor Feng’s name before.

Bai Xiang then briefly told her about *On the Five Worms*, and about the Feathering Sect, which had clearly been established based on *On the Five Worms*. She also explained the doctrine of coexistence upheld by Emperor Feng, all while carefully observing Li Sheng’s reaction.

Li Sheng and Wang Ran were indeed not the same kind of people.

*Sword of Empty Imagination* contained traces of Li Sheng’s sword manual. Along Bai Xiang’s smooth path upward, this stern nun, whom she had once mentally equated with an exterminating abbess archetype, had in fact contributed to her growth.

Only, as time had passed and Bai Xiang’s understanding of her had deepened, she discovered that although Abbess Li Sheng looked stern and cold, often seeming utterly unfeeling, she was not some rigid person incapable of adaptation.

And because Bai Xiang owed her a karmic debt, she had actually been inclined to let Li Sheng enter the core circle of the dojo as it now existed.

She could tell that Abbess Li Sheng and her master Xiang Xian actually got along quite well. Pulling Li Sheng into the core circle would not only add another capable helper, but at the very least could also comfort her master a little, so that when Bai Xiang was absent, Xiang Xian would not feel lonely.

Mm… that way of putting it sounded a little strange…

But since that was the consideration, certain secrets that only floated on the surface should be told to Li Sheng. Bai Xiang also wanted to see what Li Sheng’s reaction would be. This was the second assessment after taking her in.

“Because of the court’s information blockade, I did not know about the preceding dynasty before,” Li Sheng said frankly.

“You saying all this, Dao Lord, is also because you are worried that I might still feel a sense of belonging and hesitate, yes? But there is no need for that.”

Li Sheng turned her head northward and said openly, “Before the court’s frontier had yet extended over Qizhou, the struggles between the Taixu line and Benling’s Tiger-Subduing Temple were the main current in this land.”

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“Although later, because of unification, many conflicts eased, the court’s attitude toward the Qi lands… one could say that for a hundred years it has never shown us a good face.”

“And then there is this latest matter, which amounts to abandonment and betrayal. On top of that, you, Dao Lord, have already exposed how they treated the Taixu predecessors…”

Li Sheng drew a deep breath. “I stopped thinking of myself as a subject of Yu long ago!”

Her temperament was fierce, and she spoke with complete directness. She had effectively declared her stance to Bai Xiang in plain terms.

If such words had been spoken a year earlier, they would have been a capital offense. She was effectively telling Bai Xiang: revolt as you please. We of Shangqing have no feelings left for the current court. Whatever you do, I will follow.

Bai Xiang inclined her head, and the atmosphere in the cabin immediately softened quite a bit.

Since she was inclined to draw Li Sheng closer, Bai Xiang took out the black card and logged into HonorNet, using it to contact Zhu Canghai and He Xian while also introducing Li Sheng to information about the Upper Realm. It was another direct mental shock for Li Sheng, making her understand at last where the peril facing Shangqing Dao in Zezhou had truly come from.

Li Sheng broke out in a cold sweat. If she and Old Man Wang had only just arrived in Maozhou, and something had already happened over in Qiyun, then the only factor that could serve as the dividing line in the changing situation was the formal announcement of the Dao-Void Martial Exercises.

What did that mean?

It meant that before this announcement was made, many of those demonfolk from the Void Realm had been restraining themselves. They had all been pretending.

But after the announcement, who knew how those things interpreted its deeper meaning… They might have taken it as a signal that the main world and its currently strongest dynasty were about to be partitioned, and so their conduct immediately became reckless and unrestrained.

If I had moved even a little slower, and Shangqing were still in the Ze lands now, then there would have been no possibility of getting out.

And not just that. Li Sheng also thought of Long Qingyu, the Zezhou Prefectural Inspector who had parachuted into office earlier.

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It was said that this man was very close to the Fourth Prince, Yao Feng. And Yao Feng and the young prince Yao Sheng were like inseparable brothers. Both were dissatisfied with Crown Prince Yao Quan.

On the way here, she had also heard from Old Man Wang about the situation in Qiyun. It was the same there: an official had been parachuted in, and that Fang Wenyuan also seemed to be one of the Crown Prince’s men.

The relationships involved here were extremely subtle…

Li Sheng could no longer understand what exactly the court was trying to do. In her view, however incompetent and immoral the current dynasty might be, when facing Void Realm invaders, it should at the very least have adopted a unified stance against them.

How could it be doing this instead, actually allowing the princes to link up with the various Void Realm Daoist factions?

What was this supposed to achieve?

Dividing itself from within?

Li Sheng could not make sense of it, but Bai Xiang understood it perfectly well.

If nothing unexpected had happened, then the Great Yu court was employing a “split-the-eggs” strategy.

In other words, not putting all its eggs in one basket, like those great noble houses in chaotic times that would always send sons into the households of rival factions.

And combined with what Monk Zhuye had described, that “the dragon struggle consists of supporting a person bearing Purple Qi to establish a dynasty, ultimately defeating all rivals and thereby obtaining the protection of the primary order, so that one can remain when the next great tribulation arrives”—

Well then, if Liu Yong in the wild could possess Purple Qi, there was no reason the imperial descendants of the legitimate current dynasty could not.

In fact, theirs should be more abundant and denser. Those princes and princesses could likewise serve as the future dynasty’s cores of fortune.

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They could absolutely each cooperate with different factions and simply see which side laughed last.

No matter who won, it could still count as a continuation of Great Yu.

As Li Sheng sat there in mounting unease, worrying about the effects the great tribulation and chaotic age would bring, she did not notice the fleeting hint of ridicule at the corner of Bai Xiang’s lips.

The court had played a clever game.

The Demon Court had worked an even better one.

This was obviously the result of phased negotiations between the two sides. In this way, the court’s imperial line would be preserved, while the Demon Court would gain the guarantee and support of the current dynasty before the struggle for the dragon had even formally begun.

Bai Xiang did not care who was emperor, nor did she care what schemes the Demon Court held in secret. She did not care whether, as Li Huiran of the Demon Court Heaven-Patrol had once told her, they maintained a certain degree of order because they viewed humanity as a “reserve force” for the demon race, believing that humanity would one day become their own kind, and so had refrained from pushing the many forces under them to exterminate humankind.

She did not care about any of that. She truly did not.

There was only one thing she cared about: whoever they were, whichever of those high-and-mighty beings it was, whenever they made any decision capable of affecting the common people, or even her own fate, they had never once asked for her opinion.

Qizhou was so close to Maozhou. If someone dared perform evil sacrifices in the Qi lands today, then tomorrow would they not come to Maozhou to do the same?

In emotion and in reason alike, she had no grounds to sit back and do nothing.

At just that moment, a message came through on the black-card jade token from Zhu Canghai. He reported that the mountain pass known as Lingyun Peak, the gateway into Qiyun Circuit, had been barricaded, and they were being forbidden to proceed any farther.